At this point, there is only one manufacturer of home sized freeze driers so it is kind of an all in or all out type of decision - either you want a freeze-drier or you don't/are ready for one now or not yet. Not really much other choice though, I am sure, over time that will change. There are many dehydrators on the market - not so yet for freeze-driers that a home based person could manage/house.
Meat of all kinds (unless it is really fatty) dries beautifully in the HR freeze-drier. Cooked or uncooked, both dry well and rehydrate well - to pretty well what they were before. It is like garbage in, garbage out though - it won't toughen tender meat and it won't tenderize tough meat. Freeze dried meats are light as a feather and often dry much faster than other kinds of foods. Shrimp, scallops, fish also do extremely well in the freeze-drier.
I guess you have not seen my numerous mentions of the forum thread on the eGullet board (which is a general culinary board but there are people there who are preppers using the HR machine as well as others with a more varied culinary interest also using the same machine) - there are many pictures there of things freeze dried (including all sorts of meats) in the HR freeze-drier. It was so many pages long that it was finally broken into several parts - it starts here:
http://forums.egullet.org/topic/149399-freeze-driers-and-freeze-dried-food-part-1/page-1. I highly recommend that you go read there - and if you have further questions, perhaps join and ask them.
A number of us are also working on a FAQ (with setup procedures, tips and techniques, etc.) which hopefully will help new owners/users when done. You can get really great results right out of the box but there are things you need to know and there is a bit of 'maintenance' (primarily pump oil changes). This freeze-drier really has only been widely available for a few months now so most of us are new to using it. I have no idea how many people now own one but HR has been getting quite a few orders lately I think.
Old Fart - I guess those are possibilities but I would somehow doubt that, since this is a really new machine for the home market, many of those organizations have access to one yet - though I am sure someone out there can talk from experience with a commercial machine or from the academic viewpoint about the art of or scientific process for/merits of freeze drying. A flower shop which has a larger (but still relatively small) system for freeze drying flowers may have an owner who has done other things in that machine but that still doesn't tell you about this specific machine. The HR freeze drier works much faster than any commercial machine - because the load is much smaller and the contents must be cut up much smaller (thickness-wise) to fit and dry properly in this machine than they would be in a larger machine which may take days to weeks to freeze dry something much thicker.
